Many electric motor stators are configured to include a non-conductive terminal board mounted to an end face of the stator core, which terminal board carries electrically conductive terminals to which start and finish leads of the electric field coils wound onto the core are attached. Such stators are particularly suited for fully automated production because the electric field coils may be machine wound onto such stator cores and the start and finish leads of each coil may be at least temporarily secured to the terminal boards or terminals mounted thereon before the wound stator is removed from the winding machine for further processing. The coils will not unwind or despool upon removal of the stator from the winding machine because the finish leads are each secured to the terminal board or a terminal thereon. The start leads, as is well known, are each trapped by their respective coil turns in addition to being connected to the terminal board or terminals thereon.
In other stator configurations, no terminal board is mounted on the stator core. Thus, no terminal members are provided to which the coil leads can be connected before removal of the stator from the winding machine. "Boardless" stators have not been particularly suited for fully automated manufacturing because the coil leads, and in particular the finish leads, are not secured before the wound stators are removed from a winding machine. Therefore, the coils tend to despool after a wound stator is removed from the winding machine. To prevent such despooling, the current practice is to machine wind the coils and then manually to remove the wound stators from the winding machine. The worker who removes the wound stator secures the free finish leads by taping the finish leads to their respective coils. However, some despooling may still occur. Therefore, before securing the finish leads by tape, the worker must ensure that any coil turns that have despooled are reformed. As is evident, this procedure significantly increases the time needed to manufacture the stator.
The above-described despooling problem also arises in the manufacture of stators having terminal boards if the stators are manufactured by a process wherein the finish leads are not automatically connected to the terminal boards or the terminals thereon.
As to the documents incorporated by reference, Beakes et al. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,186,405 and 5,549,253 show a turret stator winder including mechanisms useful in the practice of the instant invention. These include a stator winding head 92 with a shuttle or ram 94 and a programmably-operable lead pull assembly 208 that includes wire grippers 84. These also include pairs of winding forms 80 and 82, winding form retainer blades 130 and 132, and mechanisms included for moving the winding forms toward and away from the winding station. Of particular interest relative to the instant disclosure is assembly of parts for moving "the front pair of winding forms 80" described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,186,405 beginning at column 7, line 25 and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,549,253 beginning at column 6, line 1. To avoid unnecessary duplication of disclosure, parts of the machine of this invention which perform the same or essentially the same purpose as parts of the machine illustrated in the '405 and '253 patents are referred to in the accompanying drawings by the same reference numbers.
Reference numbers 300 and above are used herein to refer to parts for which there is no corresponding part in the '405 and '253 patents.
The present invention could be used with a turret stator winder as shown in the '405 and '253 patents. However, the invention is illustrated in connection with an in-line stator winder in which stators move along tracks to and from the winding station. Newman U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,384 is incorporated herein to show a representative in-line winder with which this invention could be used.
Both Beakes et al. '405 and '253 patents and the Newman '384 patent show stators which have terminal boards to which lead wires are at least temporarily connected at a robot lead connect station immediately following the winding of the stator. As disclosed therein, the lead wires are temporarily held by wire clips or clamps while the freshly-wound stators are transferred to a lead connect station. The aforementioned Beakes et al. '771 patent addresses the need to prevent stator coil finish wires from despooling after the winding operations are completed. The winding machine disclosed in the '771 patent includes a turret which delivers the freshly wound stators to a robot station at which the finish leads are tucked on the outside of the stator coils. While in transit from the winding station to the robot station, the coil lead wires are held by temporary wire clamps.